1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automatic washing machines employing vertical axis agitators to provide a generally toroidal rollover motion to clothes and wash fluid within the machine.
2. The Prior Art
When an ordinary washing basket is heavily loaded with clothes, the heavy load tends to crowd a conventional agitator and often affects adversely achievement of a full rollover action. Maximum rollover is desired to expose all portions of the load to adequate scrubbing action.
An efficient movement pattern for clothes within an automatic washing machine having a vertical axis agitator is one of toroidal rollover, for example, as accomplished by a so-called double acting auger agitator of the type disclosed and claimed in a series of patents assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, i.e., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,987,508, 3,987,651, 3,987,652 and 4,048,820. Such rollover action is accomplished by providing a means for moving clothes down the agitator center post, radially outwardly from the oscillating agitator vanes, upwardly along the wall of the wash receptacle, and inwardly to the center post at the surface of the wash fluid, forming a toroidal pattern in the wash zone and within the washing liquid.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,543,323, 1,688,031 and 1,754,626 disclose automatic washing machines having raised rims on oscillating circular skirts. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,629,391 and Re 18,280 show non-oscillating flow deflectors in the bottom of wash receptacles of automatic washing machines. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,632,866, 2,665,959, Des. 100,861, Des. 105,517, and Des. 127,576, and French Pat. No. 1,020,189 show agitators having generally circular skirts with upward convolutions in the circumferential direction thereon.
A prior art agitator device had a skirt portion and generally upright vanes having a wavy configuration throughout their vertical extent. Attached to a chordal section of the agitator skirt between each of the upright vanes was a flat or planar, crescent-shaped cam. Oscillation of the agitator and the crescent-shaped cams thereon in a body of water produced some additional agitation, the added agitation being directed generally in a vertical direction.